Name-wise, the Sofitel Europe’s restaurant, BE Café Marché Jourdan, hasn’t exactly chosen the easy way. I fear it may remain known as ‘le restaurant du Sofitel’. What chef Marc Pâquet has achieved, however, is nothing less than phenomenal: prise the Eurocrats away from their comfort zone, and feed them Belgian cuisine, using Belgian produce.

Judging Le Frascati on the quality of its cuisine alone wouldn’t do justice to the place. Decor-wise, Le Frascati is pretty much your quintessential Brussels brasserie, all wood panelling, mirrors and warmth.  The clientele blends trendy southerners (that’s south-of-the-canal) with regulars, although it’s difficult to tell; everyone seems to receive the mine host treatment. On the food front, however, it’s a textbook example of quality and quantity – and then some.

It was legitimate to assume that, for Madness, 2012 had peaked already, what with playing the ageless Our House first on the roof of Buckingham Palace (“in the middle of One’s street”) for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee then at the closing ceremony of the Olympics. Their annual Christmas jaunt – which this year features a four-day House of Fun weekend at Butlins, no less – was meant to provide the usual chirpy coda to the calendar year, and that was that.

But the real beauty of A La Mort Subite lies deeper: it takes us back to our early childhood, when beautiful bars like this were still abundant. Mort Subite is the name of a beer and means “sudden death”. But, contrary to what many Flemings think, it has nothing to do with the percentage of alcohol in the beer that would make you black out instantly.

Sunday lunch is not – heaven forbid – meant to be a symbolist experience, but we could have been forgiven for thinking otherwise. It was election day across Belgium, and we were in Sint-Genesius-Rode – one of the most notorious linguistic minefields of Brussels’ suburbia. Our only request for lunch was “somewhere neutral”. Oh, and can the – mostly lethargic – dog come too?